Now that we can create custom books, I think there should be a way to "copy" books too, without rewriting them every time. A good example when this would be needed would be if you wanted to give out books with specific instructions on a SMP server. It would be a waste of time to manually re write your book for each new person.

My thoughts on how books should be copied:
-you create a new block, the "book press" (or other name). You place it somewhere in your map, and right click on it. You then put a written book, and up to a stack of normal books. You add ink sacks and some other fuel (redstone could be a fuel?). The book press will now work to make copies of your book for you.

What do you think? Do you think this would be a useful suggestion? What crafting recipe would you like for it? How should it work, which fuel source?

A printing press should definitely incorporate a piston into the crafting recipe.

However, an alternative way to copy books might simply be to use the crafting grid. A shapeless recipe of the Book and Quill you want to copy and either a blank Book and Quill or a book, an ink sac, and a feather.

If identical BaQ's can be stacked, both will appear in the output square. If they cannot be stacked, the original will stay in the crafting grid and the copy will be in the output square (just like the buckets when crafting cake.)

EDIT: Of course, the printing press would be capable of mass producing copied books. So there's room for both methods of copying, I suppose.

That...is absolutely brilliant. I can definitely see that being useful. Not just for SMP, either. In either game mode, you might want to use this to take a book of important notes you've made with you when exploring (or any other book you like to have on hand), but keep a "master" copy safe in your base in case you die, so that the book isn't lost forever.

Do you mean, that you create new map. Then you want exactly same map? There is already a way to copy them.
Inside minecraft folder, go to saves, then copy the map and then paste.

Anyways, i support the book copying idea!

No, no, no! That's just silly. They mean the actual map item. You stick in a filled-in map, make copies, and don't have to worry about losing your old map when a creeper comes up to ask, "What'ssss that your sssscribling on, there?"

No, no, no! That's just silly. They mean the actual map item. You stick in a filled-in map, make copies, and don't have to worry about losing your old map when a creeper comes up to ask, "What'ssss that your sssscribling on, there?"

That...is absolutely brilliant. I can definitely see that being useful. Not just for SMP, either. In either game mode, you might want to use this to take a book of important notes you've made with you when exploring (or any other book you like to have on hand), but keep a "master" copy safe in your base in case you die, so that the book isn't lost forever.

But if I had a monopoly on things, other people couldn't share them.
Understanding the mechanisms of why you can only copy certain books is pretty difficult.
Maybe there would be some kind of seal or something, I don't know.
Perhaps people would just type out copies anyway. It wouldn't be foolproof.

That would be a really great idea. That way if you wrote something really awesome on SMP, you could make copies and sell them with in-game currency. Like any item, or if the server has an economy mod, then just that kind of money.

And then there is the issue of piracy, but the book, when moused over, it says "By (insert name here)".
So if the SMP server has a way of verifying books going up for sale, only the ones with the original author's name would be sold.

A book press would be useful for some other reasons too, like you could easily make backup copies in Singleplayer.

Haha cool, thanks for sharing! I wonder how he'll make it look and how we will craft it.

I think that all manually written books should come out as "First Editions".
Also, the author should have an option to make the first edition the only book that can be copied. So if the author wants, you cannot copy a copy.